To_Smoke_Or_Not_To_Smoke_

To Smoke Or Not To Smoke' To smoke or not to smoke' These days, most people know the answer—and yet 46 million Americans lit up last year, at least 1 million for the first time (Levingston 96). Despite the mounting evidence, the tobacco industry stubbornly defends its products, contending that no one has proved a cause-and-effect link between smoking and disease. On the contrary medical evidence now proves a multitude of diseases traced to smoking. Heart Disease: More Americans die of coronary artery disease than any other illness, and smokers face twice the risk of dying from cardiac ailments. Smoking causes death by stroke and aneurysm and also leads to peripheral vascular disease. Cancer: Studies today definitively show that smoking causes lung cancer—America’s leading cancer killer—in both men and women. The risk of dying from the disease is twenty-two times higher for male smokers and twelve times higher for female smokers (Hollbrook 26). Other Diseases: Smoking is the major cause of chromic obstructive lung diseases (including emphysema). It increases the risk of pneumonia and of gastric and duodenal ulcers. Smoking has been linked with prenatal deaths (due to respiratory difficulties and premature births) and with marked loss of hipbone smoking, nicotine, acupuncture, patients, smokers, patch, replacement, treatment, therapy, should, disease, withdrawal, stop, patient, patches, help, cessation, addiction, 26, risk, quit, psychological, programs, process, one, insomnia, hollbrook, best, after, women, tooth, times, symptoms, skin, since